letter from afar

New Orleans is still the talk of the town, of the world, but I have stopped paying so much attention, because even here in Spain the blame game is in full swing. People here are overwhelmingly anti-Bush, so they are really using the disaster in New Orleans as an example of Bush's racism, arrogance, whatever. I sort of feel disgusted by all the blaming, especially because before Katrina most Spaniards didn't even know where NOLA was. Last night we were wathcing a sort of news program with six people (pundits) sitting at a table arguing about New Orleans, Bush, etc. The questions they posed were these:
1. Did Bush want black people to die?
2. Did the US's production of CO and other toxins lead to this disaster?
3. Is New Orleans cursed? Was the storm the result of all of the voodoo, vampires, and shady strip clubs on Bourbon Street?

Needless to say, Vero and I wanted to throw the TV out the window.

I have one really sort of selfish care about Katrina and New Orleans. Five years ago I began a novel about four characters. When we Vero and I moved to New Orleans, the characters sort of fit in there...so for 3 1/2 years, in NOLA, I wrote of their exploits there. After awhile, the city itself took on greater significance in the novel, and by the time we left NOLA, NOLA was something of a deity in the novel...no, not deity, but like a benign yet passive...well, the elements of water in the city, of condensation, of haze turning into fog, turing into drizzle, turning into rain, into a storm..

Sorry, I am really not a word-smith today. I'll try again another day. What I am trying to say is that I have written so much about the HAZINESS of life there, about ambiguity and humidity, and about the regenerative power of water, but now I don't know what to do. Proceed as planned? Revise in the face of Katrina? It's really selfish of me to even be worried about this...but....